Ask the Right Questions, The Sales and RevOps Podcast

Today we talk to Lindsay Riddell - President and Founder of Luminet. This conversation is the first of three and today we talk about why you should ignore what people say. Don't worry about new shiny tactics. Pounding the pavement and getting new business is all that matters.  We get very tactical: Why focusing on your customers is critical to business success. Tactical sales tips for entrepr...

Patience is a critical success factor in sales and marketing. A lot of small and medium-sized businesses put themselves in a situation where there back is against the wall, and they need results fast. Unfortunately, that often leads to bad sales and marketing behaviour. In today's episode, we talk about: Why it's OK to start your sales process over Why the marketing around marketing tech is mislea...

Good marketing takes time. There are some quick wins, but overall, you need to be patient. That means you have to start today.  When you're small, you're never going to compete against the big players with the big budgets, so forget about generating leads. Focus on building your brand instead (which, in turn, will help generate leads). And to build a brand, you need to create content. In this epis...

In sales, asking questions is everything. When you don't ask questions, you end up with a sort of idea of what you think the prospect wants, and you have an idea of what you think you want. Whether that's what the prospect wants is pure luck. A discovery session is about trying to find out what's important to that person, what the challenges are, why they want to fix them. You're trying to find ou...

Quantifying a problem - figuring out what your product or service is worth to your client is a significant part of knowing if you'll get the contract. Sometimes it's trickier than others, but ultimately everything had a value. You might not always be able to attach a dollar amount up-front to every problem, but you can work with the person in front of you to understand the impact of their current...

SMBs tend not to market where their clients are. They either make assumptions about what their audience does, or they mistake themselves for their audience. In this episode, Paul and Fab talk about: Why businesses don't want to market where their clients are, The ivory tower approach to marketing, Why people fail on social networks, Why you should often post on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, How...

The words we use to describe the people sales and marketing speak and engage with everyday dehumanize those we seek out. Not all software is flexible enough to accommodate a change in vocabulary. Still, it's time for you to scratch words like Suspect, Prospect, Lead, MQL and Opportunity from your sales and marketing vocabulary. In this short episode, we talk about: What you need to understand abou...

At some point, Marketing needs to transfer their leads over to the Sales Team. How much information needs to be collected before they're sent over? How much is too much? Do salespeople actually care about all the collected data? In this episode, we discuss what information Salespeople need when they get a new lead from Marketing. Specifically, we talk about: What a good salesperson should be able...

Nurturing new leads that engage with your content helps your sales team speak with those who are most ready to buy. But lead nurturing isn't for everyone. If you don't generate enough leads, you don't need to nurture them. Think of a different approach instead: post-sales conversation nurturing for example. If you do generate enough leads, think about whether you should set-up sequences to increas...

Fab had a major epiphany!  He's a marketing person. The core of his career is email and social media, and he came to realize that... Cold calls > Cold emails Why Cold Calling Is Important? Live conversation encourage action. Emails aren't a conversational tool. LinkedIn Messages either. You send, you wait. When things slow down, it's easier for them to breakdown. Specifically in this episo...

Disqualifying leads is difficult for both salespeople and marketers. There are leads who clearly don't qualify, but even when they're the right fit on paper, you sometimes need to walk away. People don't disqualify leads for a ton of reasons, but the two big ones are: Because they have bosses who prefer full pipelines than accurate pipelines Because they aren't asking the right questions, so they...

In this episode, Paul and Fab talk about empathy and how it affects the relationship with leads and clients, both on the sales and the marketing side. Specifically: Why most reps don't take the time to listen (1:00) Why features and benefits aren't the endpoints (3:31) What is empathy in sales and marketing (6:18) Why marketers have a hard time using empathy (7:33) One way to develop empathy in ma...

In this episode, Fab tries to cold call a VP on the air. We also talk about gatekeepers, emails and their role when prospecting. How to get past gatekeepers (1:05) What to keep in mind when you're nervous making cold calls (2:25) Live cold call! (4:50) What type of voicemail to leave (6:16) What's the role of email when you're prospecting (8:07) What's the best time to make cold calls (9:59) What'...

CRMs! Wrong or incomplete data in the CRM impacts every facet of the business. It affects your ability to reach out to leads, nurture them, target them with ads. It also influences revenue prediction and pipeline analysis. Above all, CRM is a tool to help your salespeople . If salespeople aren't using the CRM, it's usually a sign that something else is wrong. In this episode we cover: How a market...

The elevator pitch is your opening statement. When you meet someone, and you want to tell them what you do, but you want to have it resonate with them - that's what we call the elevator pitch.  In this episode, we talk about: Why most elevator pitches fail (1:05) Why emotions are a critical component of elevator pitches (3:28) How to create your elevator pitch (6:48) What marketing should do...